After proceeding a greater way in this inconvenient manner than was at all comfortable to his knees and shins, Waverley perceived the smell of smoke, which probably had been much sooner distinguished by the more acute nasal organs of his guide.  It proceeded from the corner of a low and ruinous sheepfold, the walls of which were made of loose stones, as is usual in Scotland.  Close by this low wall the Highlander guided Waverley, and, in order probably to make him sensible of his danger, or perhaps to obtain the full credit of his own dexterity, he intimated to him, by sign and example, that he might raise his head so as to peep into the sheepfold.  Waverley did so, and beheld an outpost of four or five soldiers lying by their watch-fire.  They were all asleep, except the sentinel, who paced backwards and forwards with his firelock on his shoulder, which glanced red in the light of the fire as he crossed and recrossed before it in his short walk, casting his eye frequently to that part of the heavens from which the moon, hitherto obscured by mist, seemed now about to make her appearance,

In the course of a minute or two, by one of those sudden changes of atmosphere incident to a mountainous country, a breeze arose, and swept before it the clouds which had covered the horizon, and the night planet poured her full effulgence upon a wide and blighted heath, skirted indeed with copsewood and stunted trees in the quarter from which they had come, but open and bare to the observation of the sentinel in that to which their course tended.  The wall of the sheepfold, indeed, concealed them as they lay, but any advance beyond its shelter seemed impossible without certain discovery.

The Highlander eyed the blue vault, but far from blessing the useful light with Homer’s, or rather Pope’s, benighted peasant, he muttered a Gaelic curse upon the unseasonable splendour of Mac-FARLANE’S BUAT (i. e. lantern). [See Note 21.] He looked anxiously around for a few minutes, and then apparently took his resolution.  Leaving his attendant with Waverley, after motioning to Edward to remain quiet, and giving his comrade directions in a brief whisper, he retreated, favoured by the irregularity of the ground, in the same direction and in the same manner as they had advanced.  Edward, turning his head after him, could perceive him crawling on all-fours with the dexterity of an Indian, availing himself of every bush and inequality to escape observation, and never passing over the more exposed parts of his track until the sentinel’s back was turned from him.  At length he reached the thickets and underwood which partly covered the moor in that direction, and probably extended to the verge of the glen where Waverley had been so long an inhabitant.  The Highlander disappeared, but it was only for a few minutes, for he suddenly issued forth from a different part of the thicket, and advancing boldly upon the open heath, as if to invite discovery, he levelled his piece, and fired